Hoke, as I think was obvious from context, not entirely serious about saying Barchi pronounces his name wrong. My father often had to correct people who pronounced "Deis" various ways -- and he said "if I said it's pronounced "SMITH" who could say I was wrong??"

But I like clear and unambiguous rules and Italian has very clear and unambiguous rules, so having learned those and having observed that they are obeyed 100% in Italy, it grates on the ear to hear people breaking them, altho as you pointed out it happens all the time here. My theory, why change it, why not say it as an Italian would? We've kept the Swiss/German pronunciation "DICE" despite everyone calling us "DEECE" or worse. My mailman calls me DIAZ.

Bruschetta drives me a little crazy -- altho people don't seem to have a problem with Focaccia or Pancetta or Ciabatta...

Frank Deis wrote:Hoke, as I think was obvious from context, not entirely serious about saying Barchi pronounces his name wrong. My father often had to correct people who pronounced "Deis" various ways -- and he said "if I said it's pronounced "SMITH" who could say I was wrong??" I knew you were being tongue in cheek, Frank.

But I like clear and unambiguous rules and Italian has very clear and unambiguous rules, so having learned those and having observed that they are obeyed 100% in Italy, it grates on the ear to hear people breaking them, altho as you pointed out it happens all the time here. My theory, why change it, why not say it as an Italian would? We've kept the Swiss/German pronunciation "DICE" despite everyone calling us "DEECE" or worse. My mailman calls me DIAZ. Something Italian is 'clear and unambiguous??? Whoda thunk it?

Bruschetta drives me a little crazy -- altho people don't seem to have a problem with Focaccia or Pancetta or Ciabatta... Oh ho, do I agree...brooshettah drives me bonkers too; one of my pet peeves; grates on me to hear it. It's that confusion from Italian to American on the hard CH that apparently creates the difficulty. Although we've at least conquered Chee-an-tee. Which used to come in fiaschi.

You'd be OK if everyone started saying "spa JET tee"?

UGH! I don't ghet that. Now you're just being silly. Everyone knows its "sketty" or "pusghetty".

Just to pile on to your excellent exposition, Frank, it's a generalizable rule for Latin languages including, to an extent, English: c and g take "hard" sounds when followed by a,o and U and "soft" sounds when followed by e and i. In Spanish, to get a hard g before e and i, you make it "gu" as in guitar, guerra, otherwise it's soft as in gelado (pronounced hay-lah-tho); in Italian, you use "gh" and "ch" (and when you want the "ch" sound in Italian you use "cc" before e and i, as in capuccino). The French, always marching to their own drummer, have the cedilla for softening an otherwise hard c, as in garçon, and the "gu" trick for hardening an otherwise soft g.

Mark Lipton

p.s. Where this gets interesting is when dealing with Germanic surnames in France. Does René Engel pronounce his last name as "ohn-JAY" or as "ENG-el"?

Mark Lipton wrote:...in Italian, you use "gh" and "ch" (and when you want the "ch" sound in Italian you use "cc" before e and i, as in capuccino)

Modifying this a little, Mark, in Italian you don't need a double "c" before e and i to get a "ch" sound, one "c" does the trick. Double consonants like that mean you're supposed to elongate pronunciation of the consonant in question. Or so I thought I learned in my very limited experience in conversational Italian.

Yeah, to the extent that English is actually a Germanic language, with a healthy lardening of Gaelic/Erse, and a hearty thickening of Gallic French, then straitjacketed into an iron corset of imposed Latin/Greco rules and regulations by academics, and serially spiced by additions of just about every language grouping through the entire world.

Just to pile on to your excellent exposition, Frank, it's a generalizable rule for Latin languages including, to an extent, English: c and g take "hard" sounds when followed by a,o and U and "soft" sounds when followed by e and i. In Spanish, to get a hard g before e and i, you make it "gu" as in guitar, guerra, otherwise it's soft as in gelado (pronounced hay-lah-tho); in Italian, you use "gh" and "ch" (and when you want the "ch" sound in Italian you use "cc" before e and i, as in capuccino). The French, always marching to their own drummer, have the cedilla for softening an otherwise hard c, as in garçon, and the "gu" trick for hardening an otherwise soft g.

Mark Lipton

p.s. Where this gets interesting is when dealing with Germanic surnames in France. Does René Engel pronounce his last name as "ohn-JAY" or as "ENG-el"?

In France EVERYTHING is pronounced as if originally French. I'd have to look up the lake or the town -- but we were in France a few miles south of Geneva and I thought I would try pronouncing my name "DICE". No dice "Nous n'avons pas une chambre reservée..." I had to say it in French, probably also in Geneva as well.

In France EVERYTHING is pronounced as if originally French. I'd have to look up the lake or the town -- but we were in France a few miles south of Geneva and I thought I would try pronouncing my name "DICE". No dice "Nous n'avons pas une chambre reservée..." I had to say it in French, probably also in Geneva as well

Sounds like a scene in the Pink Panther with Inspector Clouseau, Frank.

Mark Lipton wrote:...in Italian, you use "gh" and "ch" (and when you want the "ch" sound in Italian you use "cc" before e and i, as in capuccino)

Modifying this a little, Mark, in Italian you don't need a double "c" before e and i to get a "ch" sound, one "c" does the trick. Double consonants like that mean you're supposed to elongate pronunciation of the consonant in question. Or so I thought I learned in my very limited experience in conversational Italian.

You're absolutely right, Mark. The doubling of the cc gets you a pause, so it "cap-pooch-chino."

Mark Lipton wrote:p.s. Where this gets interesting is when dealing with Germanic surnames in France. Does René Engel pronounce his last name as "ohn-JAY" or as "ENG-el"?

In France EVERYTHING is pronounced as if originally French. I'd have to look up the lake or the town -- but we were in France a few miles south of Geneva and I thought I would try pronouncing my name "DICE". No dice "Nous n'avons pas une chambre reservée..." I had to say it in French, probably also in Geneva as well.

Frank, in my experience the French are quite diligent about pronouncing "foreign" names using the rules of the original language, so Möet is not pronounced "Mow-ay" but "Mow-et" because it's Dutch in origin (Huet apparently gets its nonstandard pronunciation from a local French dialect, though). In your case, they may not have recognized the name as Germanic in origin, or maybe they were simply being bloody-minded.

Mark Lipton wrote:p.s. Where this gets interesting is when dealing with Germanic surnames in France. Does René Engel pronounce his last name as "ohn-JAY" or as "ENG-el"?

In France EVERYTHING is pronounced as if originally French. I'd have to look up the lake or the town -- but we were in France a few miles south of Geneva and I thought I would try pronouncing my name "DICE". No dice "Nous n'avons pas une chambre reservée..." I had to say it in French, probably also in Geneva as well.

Frank, in my experience the French are quite diligent about pronouncing "foreign" names using the rules of the original language, so Möet is not pronounced "Mow-ay" but "Mow-et" because it's Dutch in origin (Huet apparently gets its nonstandard pronunciation from a local French dialect, though). In your case, they may not have recognized the name as Germanic in origin, or maybe they were simply being bloody-minded.

Mark Lipton

Mark, does not correspond with my experience but I will have to keep my ears open for counter-examples. I'm working on coming up with a few but I think the gears are getting a little rusty. It's not a "proper name" but one thing that comes to mind -- when we went to Paris with the kids back in the 90's, we had to go to burger joints and it took me a while to decode "Ahm boor jay"

[edit] OK thought of another. My son was in a student exchange program -- he got to go to Paris in April. Some poor French kids got to come visit New Jersey in February. We drove them around a lot. At one point they said they really wanted to go to "Eeel Feee Zhay." ?? Tom pointed out that there was a Tommy Hilfiger outlet a few miles away and the French consider him quite snazzy.